Paco´s Life: Madrid

Eastern Europe Tour II: La crisis de Katerini vs hospitalidad serbia / Katerini crisis vs serbian hospitality

Katerini, northern Greece city, full of russian families spending their holidays, beach bars and not much more. The road heading there is nice though, Greece is a hilly country surrounded by the very blue Egean sea. Moreover, the food there is excellent…and this is basically all good I can say about the first stop of my particular Eastern Europe tour. Katerine was a fucking mess, one of this drunken nights I sometimes have in which everything goes out of control. Katerini was the end of my friendship with Giordos and a very drastic change in the trip plan. I am not gonna say here what happened nor to give my opinion about the reaction of my supposed greek friend. This is not anyone´s else business, the important fact concerning the trip story I am trying to tell in this blog is that he took the decision of travelling alone after Budapest. As you can imagine this result in a sort of nasty situation. We still had 2 days of driving and a night in Serbia to be together. Unfriendly faces and tense silence within the few square meters of the car. Nothing went further cause we are reasonable people after all but it wasnt pleasant and put in serious danger a trip which had just been borned.

So, after Katerini, we went all the way up to Nis, in South Serbia where a serbian girl from hospitalityclub was gonna host us. We left Greece and crossed all over Macedona as fast as we could. The dessertic macedonian landscape gave way to a much nicer one. Serbia, at least in its southern part, is a nice country, green, full of small villages with reed-roofed houses, valleys and hills. Moreover, the weather was pretty good so, at least concerning the outside of the car, the trip happened to be nice. Dragana was waitting for us in a swimming pool so we just arrived and went straight to the water. After that we headed to her place where the real HC experience started. I am realizing I keep going over and over this topic and may be repetitive but what a great thing hospitality club is! We spent the afternoon at Dragana´s place, drinking home - made alcohol with all her family, from the grandmother to the one year old nephew. From my point of view it is not only the nightlife in a trip like this, I am starting to enjoy more and more moments like the ones we had with this serbian family. It is in this moments when I really feel I am getting to know a country and achieving the goal of the trip. The hospitality we got from Dragana and her family was simply perfect and helped to improve the complicated situation the trip was turned into.We were watching the Spanish victory in the Eurocup final surrounded by serbians, a pity I hadnt brought with me a Spanish shirt of something, I could have become the king of the party. It was curious to see how all serbians were supporting Spain rather than the germans. After that we went partying, more calmed and less alcoholic this time but still quite intense. We stayed till quite late with she and her friends. Nice bars with live music and cheap drinks. Not bad for a Sunday, thanks Dragana

Next day we walked through the city in which, in fact, there wasnt too much to see. A few curious things like parkings they pay with text messages or the fact that serbian people probably dont work too much cause all the tables were full all the day. In conclussion, a very interesting taste of Serbia, a great host and a European championship. Quite a good remedy for the greek disaster..

Eastern Europe Tour I: El Comienzo / The beginning

The horizon can be seen in the far way, surrounded by beautiful hills and lightend by the sun of this nice greek morning. The engine roars consuming kms of road to the unknown. My heart bumps stimultated by the traveler exitemente and is in this moment, and only in this moment, when I find the meaning of my life and…in fact I am stuck in this car surrounded by this endless bunch of greeks going for their weekend holidays and producing a huge traffic jump. I am fucking starving cause I havent eaten anything warm since Thursday night and my already old bones are complaining about the night I spent yesterday sleeping on Milan´s airport floor. I probably stink and feel quite tired. But, all these minor details appart, I really fell all that bullshit about the travelling feeling.Besides, the night in Milan wasnt that bad, I ended up socializing with a group of greek girls and I got a typical greek cake probably made by the granmother in exchange for some room for them in the bench I was.

While I write this the traffic jump is starting to dissapear and now we are actually making progress. With a bit of luck my ass will be getting wet in the Aegean sea this afternoon. The first stop of our trip is Katherini, a city in the North of Greece from which neither Giorgos nor me know much appart from the fact that it has a beach. In this case we wont have local support and we will have to use the old way, looking for a hostel, place to go out etc… by ourselves. This first stop is primary nightlife based so there wont be much to tell about tomorrow, what happens in the night stays in the night I saw somewhere there is the Olympus montain nearby (where the Olympic Games started). If we make it up there I will tell you about but I honestly doubt it.

So, this is the first and hopefully not the last one entry for this trip. Lets hope so much time stuck in this car will help the writting. Talk to you soon…

Un paseillo por la Europa del Este / A walk through Eastern Europe

Allright, enough of philosophycal and personal bullshit and lets move to more funny issues in this blog. Now that the last OCU payment and soon the mercenary´s money will make my bank account fatter, it is time to retake some travelling. I really needed it! Las trip was back in the beginning of February and, since then, the most far away I got was Cartagena so I was really looking forward this. And then, in a Copenhagen nostalgy email exchange, Giorgos comes up saying he needs to get his car from Athens up to Helsinki and he hadnt been able to find anyone to share the trip…A second later I was checking flights, it was the perfect plan, in one trip I would score a few european countries I havent been yet: Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia, plus a bit more of Greece and Poland. Due to flight availability and lack of time I wont be able to make it up to Helsinki but, anyway, I believe is a great trip A bit of greek beach, a couple of days in Budapest, Poland all the way from South to Norht, baltic experience… The final itinerary is as follows:

• Saturday 28th: arrival in Athens and night in Katerini, northern Greece beach city.
• Sunday 29th: drive through Macedonia as fast as possible and night in Nis, Serbian southern city.
• Monday 30th and Tuesday 1st: Budapest
• Wednesday 2th: Lublin, eastern Poland
• Thursday 3th and Friday 4th: Kaunas, Lithuania
• Saturday 5th: Riga, Latvia
• Sunday 6th: back to Madrid

Road-trip with Giorgos is not something new, we already drove all over California in a similar trip. The new thing here is the HospitalityClub factor. In each of these stops we arranged a local contact, thanks to whom we wont pay an euro for accommodation and, what is more important, we will have someone to show us around, take us for party etc… So, definitely, a very promising trip through a part of Europe I hadnt explore so far.

Therefore, next Friday, there we go again, a bag loaded with rum, a cammera and 2800 km of fun

PD: There will be more coming soon…

Mercenario del Silicio / IT Mercenary

Well, I finally made it, here we are, stuck into this train heading back from a course I have been teaching in Cartagena and having nothing else to do apart from using my new laptop to produce this new entry for my blog, an entry I owed to him after the last events in my life. As usual, I will continue the story where I left it: Paco the messy was living a bit less uncertain days in which he was committed to give up the list of various and diverse personal projects in order to achieve the precious treasure called stability. June was the date I was marking as the minimum stay period en Madrid and here we are. Aleluya!, we made it, I am still in Madrid but actually I have cheated… it´s been more than a month I have been looking for that thing attracting me so much called “new challenges”. I guess, one always look for perfection and, having a deep analysis of my current professional situation I found out a few things likely to be improved.

In fact, I was not asking for that much, my new job should give me a) more money b) a more international environment c) possibility of using a different technology d) more flexibility e) fuck the tie. At this point, and surprisingly for me, I realized that changing the country was not the main issue here even though I would lie if I would say I was not attracted by that possibility too. I will come back to this in the future, the thing is that there is a small dwarf inside me who thinks I am not done with my living abroad yet and he takes advantage of every occasion to make his point. There is even a more radical one who says working is a pain in the ass and I should save, no matter how, a big amount of money, enough to travel all around the world.

Circumstances have made them both wait for the time been. In this search I have been doing there was certainly possibilities of moving away from Spain: Germany, Utrech (Netherlands), London and even Nigeria, the most weird one I didn’t share with anyone but, for one reason or another, none of this plans went ahead. In most of the cases simply because I didn’t have the experience required. Finally, the Oscar went to Madrid. I will have to start giving more credibility to my stability speech because, in the end, voluntarily or not, I end up staying here. I signed a one year contract to develop software in Java for a Madrid based company.

This, therefore, marks the end of my career at “Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria” so, before talking about the new challenge, it is probably worth it to look back and review this professional experience. Ties and rigid time tables apart, I am pretty satisfied of my 14 months working here. For starting, is my personal professional stability record but, more important, it meant a very positive evolution concerning my professional attitude. I could say that, by the time I got back to Madrid in April 2007, I was nearly a complete useless. Three years grabbing my balls first at Cardiff and then at Stockholm had nearly removed both my concentration ability and my technical knowledge, gained while I was studying. Been focused on a computer eight hours a day doing something that, besides, was extremely boring most of the time, was a real pain and I (and some of you by listening to my complains) have suffered many professional crisis through this period .

After these 14 months I believe this situation has changed. I am not going to say I love working in IT nor that I enjoy 100% of my working time, there are periods in which time goes faster and periods in which this job is still fucking boring but, at least now, I believe I am more efficient in what I am doing, more professional and I even feel happy many times when I see something finished correctly. I have learnt a lot in OUC, in a technical way and also concerning professional attitude and that’s definitely thanks to the people I have been working with. As opposite as it happened in Stockholm, working here has been a great experience I would definitely recommend to anyone.

Why am I leaving then? A few reasons as I said before, first the miss of a more international environment. Since I am no longer an expatriate and became a common “madrileño”, I needed to keep that feeling alive somehow. Almería and Cartagena have been the more far away places I have been sent by OCU and that was not likely to change. The company is what it is and has it business locally. If something I got out of all that time living abroad it was a decent level of English and I wanted to take advantage of that.

Second reason: Money, Money, Money. I spend a lot, there is hole in my pocket since I came back from Stockholm and I have spent all this time paying bills with the credit card next month`s receipt and many times I ended up with red numbers by the end of the month. Well, now I am going to get paid almost twice, hopefully enough to get back to travelling and gain some savings. Most of my life I didn’t have to worry about money so this last year it´s been sort of stressing. The new job is $$$$ and therefore I am

Let`s add as well that I have gained time flexibility and nobody is going to force to wear this uncomfortable piece of silk around my neck and suddenly we can realize we matched all the points listed at the beginning of this entry. So what the hell am I going to be doing? Well, I have started a professional path not too explored by my classmates nor the people I know but very popular among IT European professionals: I am going to be a freelance developer. I will produce my own bills and will not be attached to a particular company but, in theory, I will go from contract to contract, ideal for my stability isn’t it? I have been hired by a London IT consultancy company that places me in a client in Madrid. Funny business this way of hiring, the londiners charge the Madrid client and then pay me. I work in this client´s site but paid by someone else. That probably means the London company is putting a high commission for the client on top of my salary in exchange for just putting an add on Internet and make the first interview. I understand the client does not want to have permanent staff in order to save costs but why don’t they just post the add themselves? Anyway, I don’t really give a flying fuck, with or without the agency commission you get much more money working like than via the usual permanent contract with a regular company. You could make a point of the fact that, in exchange of this better salary, I loose stability and can easily find myself unemployed but, again, I am unstable so this sort of fits me very well…

So, I will be working for an international Italian company with business in Madrid and many other countries in the world. I will be developing in Java in collaboration with company staff located in various places such as UK, Netherlandas, South Africa and Australia. And….yes, good guess, the travelling dwarf inside me is already elaborating plans to make them send me to any of these places. Time will tell if this is possible. For the time been (June 2008), my ass remains in Madrid, no movement in a short therm.

There is still a bunch of other things to talk about but I think this speech got too big and probably nobody kept reading so long neither I feel like writing. One of the things I was aiming with this entry, apart from the usual mental clarification exercise, was to tell about this professional alternative to my class and workmates. If I am not too lazy, I will keep talking about this in future posts and if it ends up been a bullshit you will know. Enough for today then, I leave not before saying this change made me fucking happy, I have got this good vibration telling me I scored a big hit with this. My sentimental life is still a different issue but, my professional life is definitely going well